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This book bases upon an analysis of existing cultural forms and tendencies certain prophecies and recommendations for the future. The analysis is interesting and elegant; though difficult to judge, for its apparent simplicity conceals much vagueness. The prophecies are optimistic, and the recommendations contain suggestions with which most of us would readily agree.
Dr. Ringbom commences his analysis with the abstraction of four pairs of opposing principles, which he thinks are all closely correlated with each other. These are: reactions to external and to internal situations, instincts of self-preservation and of species-preservation, individualism and collectivism, masculinity and femininity, Nordic races and Slav races. Thus Dr. Ringbom, wherever he looks in biology or sociology, finds always two opposing forces, which under different forms are ultimately the same. In this he is like many philosophers. And when he goes on to attribute all creation and development to a synthesis of these two elements and to compare this social development to the fertilization of the egg-cell by the synthesis of too unlike parts, analysts must suspect that these two principles are projections of the father and the mother.
The ills of the present society Dr. Ringbom attributes to the principle of subordination, which is shown alike in the subordination of the group to the individual in aristocracy and in the subordination of the individual to the group in communism. He thus truly sees that the sense of being dominated by father symbols cannot be permanently removed by a revolt which substitutes for the tyrant ruler the tyrant state. He thinks, however, that this principle of subordination could be abolished if men would cease to force their wills, either as individuals or as groups, upon others; or, in the language of psycho-analysis, if, out of a consideration for the Oedipus complexes of our fellows, we all cease to play the father. Such a conduct might indeed do much to r